Season preview: FS East

Association of engineers for higher automotive education has organised Formula Student East since 2016. The purpose is to represent the Eastern European region on FSAE competitions. The association focuses mostly on educational part of the event, because its mission is to help present generation of students to become the peak among professionals. The competition also gives chance to student teams of Eastern Europe to test their abilities at the international level with teams from all over the world.

After successful first year, the FS East has been written to the list of globally recognized competitions and has taken place among the leading competitions like FS Germany or FS UK.

Formula Student East 2017 will take place on 20. to 23. July in Hungary on the Euro-Ring circuit. This year the competition has increased space for 40 combustion teams and 20 electric teams compared to 28 combustion and 14 electric teams last year. Since opening of registration at the end of January, total number of registered teams is 119 from 28 countries all over the world.

For us, the FS East is going to be the first competition in season 2016/2017, which will thoroughly test abilities of SGT-FE17 in dynamic disciplines – Acceleration, Skidpad, Autocross a Endurance. Our members will be tested by static disciplines – Design Report, Cost Report a Business Plan.

Ready, steady, race

The hungarian racing history reaches into the year 2007, when their first BME FRT team was created. Later, in 2010 between 19.-22. august in the city Győr was held the first international race, where 11 teams from 6 countries were signed up. A year later 30 teams have signed up from which 28 also took part. In all history of the Formula Student Hungary races in year 2012 at the start ,between other formula cars, also 10 electric formula cars debuted. We, STUBA Green team, have also signed up to the category of the electric formula cars last year for the first time. We will repeat the race this year. The same town (Győr). Almost the same time (18.-21. august). The same place (Győr-Gönyű Kikötő). We didn’t miss a successful sing up even to Italy, where in 2014 we took 6th place in the Acceleration discipline and the 10th place in Skid Pad and Autocross discipline. This years race will take place 22.-25. july 2016 in the cityVarano de’Melegari.

We look forward to both of the races. May the force be with us.

NEW VIDEO IS HERE!

In cooperation with our general partner Volkswagen Slovakia we have created a video that briefly summarizes how the students view their membership in STUBA Green Team.

In the video you can see shots from the Formula Student Germany competition at Hockenheimring and also from the Volkswagen test track.

We hope it will help you to better imagine the idea behind our project.

FS Germany 2015

The competition was placed in legendary racing circuit in Hockenheime, lasts one week and attendance was about 100 teams from the whole world. This is the most prestigious Formula Student competition in the whole Europe. For many of us was this competition like take a cold shower , but it showed us that we can get closer to the best team , mainly in static disciplines. Unfortunately our formula wasn´t able to race, because of problems with battery box. So that, we focused on bench-marking.

Cost Event

This discipline was based on presentation of the cost report, which included the Bill of Material (list of all components in vehicle) and hierarchy of all materials and processes used during a construction.

Pricing of every material and process is made of valuation from common table. Vehicle price and consistency of making the Cost Report is compared. The jurors found in our vehicle many things, which our Cost report didn´t include, because of that we were penalized and our formula took 33th place from 39 electric formulas.

Engineering Design Event

This discipline is aimed at assessing the overall technical design of the vehicle and the explication why we chose appropriate solutions. The entire presentation in form of discussion took about an hour. The jurors on our vehicle in particular highlighted the ergonomics and design of the steering wheel. However for some of their question we weren’t prepared at all , so we took 36th place from 39 electric formulas.

Business Plan Presentation

Business plan rests in creating business model of a fictitious company, which would make our formal in quantities. The jurors reproached mainly, that our business plan wasn´t including specific financial proposal, and market analysis. We finished at the 35th place.

Scrutineering

Scrutineering is a technical checking of a vehicle, where the jurors will find out if the vehicle is safe and able to race. Due to non-functional battery box, we could not participate electrical scrutineering, which is predecessors of the mechanical and thus ,we were not allowed to participate in the dynamic disciplines.

Overall, we consider our participation in static disciplines for very instructive. Although we weren´t successful, the jurors gave us a valuable feedback, which means a lot for us.

During the next season, we would like to take static disciplines more seriously, especially Cost Event and Business Plan, as these are disciplines in which we have the best chance at a good placing.

We also talked to mechanical scruiteneer, who gave us advise what could we improve for competition in Hungary.

FS Hungary 2015

The competition was held near the Hungarian town of Gyor. The number of registered of electrical and combustion formulas was 42, compared with FSG there was “more familiar” atmosphere.

From the beginning the sun was shining, we established two cookies we were accommodated in the dormitories of local universities, and also our formula was in much better shape than it was in Germany.

Unfortunately racing was unable, because controller battery box burned down soon after we managed to spin the wheels. The static disciplines are described on following pages.

Cost Event

Hungarian Cost Event consisted of three parts:

Cost Analysis (presentation Cost Report)

Real Case (this year it was the plant design to mass production of carbon monocoque)

Sustainability Event (it is concerned with impact of production on the environment)

Compared to race in Germany we have made progress in this discipline. We were much better prepared for real-time and Sustainability event and the judges appreciated the positive feedback , mainly in graphic materials, and they recommended us to create an outline and stick to it during the presentation. We added to Cost Analysis missing items in the Cost reports ,that was pointed out from judges in Germany.

We have reached a 32th place from all teams.

Engineering Design Event

During the design event, a concept of car is presented to the Commissioner, and our decisions in the design process are defended. Commissioners are focused on innovative solutions , which technical realization must meet strict criteria. In our team of judges was the longest operating and the most famous in the history of Formula Student competition, Pat Clarke. He has been jurors since 1994 and he is the most experienced juror. He reviewed very strictly and we will be with him in e-mail contacts to send us a feedback either by design or by overall project management.

We placed in the 34th place among 42 teams.

Business Plan Presentation

In this discipline, we managed to do most progress from the race in Germany . We have created graphically and substantively interesting presentation which, utterance the jurors judged positively.

On the one hand ,they appreciated our market research and analysis of kart durability, which wasn´t mentioned in any other team. On the other hand they pointed out missing risk analysis. Overall, we were placed on the 11th place among 42 teams.